Robert Low - The Lion Wakes

Hal knew the grizzled Robert de Ros of Wark by sight, though he had not known the man was any expert on the Brabancon. Wallace, however, resplendent in his Guardian’s gold jupon, blazoned with the red lion of Scotland, did not seem surprised. He had cut the tangle of his hair into a style more suited for the Guardian of Scotland and clipped his beard short and neat – but the man beneath had not been changed one whit.

‘Aye, weel,’ he said, turning from one to the other of the clustered knights, a grim, lopsided grin twisting his face. ‘It is a nice tune. I have brought you to the ring, gentilhommes. Now ye dance if ye can.’

He nodded to Hal and then jerked his head to send him and the hobilars, the light horse, far out to the right flank, into the trees to hide and watch and, hopefully, fall on the rear of English knights once they had fallen foul of the great ring of men which stood there.

Wallace watched them go. He liked the new lord of Herdmanston and wished him well – the man had uncovered the business with Bruce and the Stone with skill and stuck to his word, though Wallace did not know what to do with the knowledge of it.

On the one hand, a valuable relic of the realm had been saved. On the other, red murder had been done, by Bruce and the Comyn. If we still stand by the end of the day, he thought, I will have to think more on it.

He shifted and looked right and left at the nobiles of Scotland. Steady as an egg on a stick, he thought morosely, and those who are not thinking on how to get advantage over their immediate neighbour and enemy are wondering how to hang on to their lands and titles.

They will run, he thought.

Sim thought so, too, and said as much, though Hal tried to ignore him. It was that Sim Craw rasp, perhaps, that prompted Nebless Clemmie to force out from the ranks and alongside, turning his ruin of a face towards Hal.

It was not entirely true to call him Nebless, since he had half the proboscis left, though the wen that had caused the loss had left a disturbing hole. For all that, it was an honest face and a Herdmanston one, which was the meat of his words.

‘The lads,’ he said to Hal in his rheumy voice, glancing back over his shoulder to make sure they were still agreed, ‘wish it known that they are all proud to be at yer stirrup, my lord. Ye ken us and you are auld in the horn when it comes to red war.’

Hal blinked, a little stunned by this. Since he had been old enough to know his place, he had taken his rank as a given, however slight it may be in the eyes of greater lords. Riding a shaggy pony across to a rickle of sticks with the Herdmanston oxen in tow for some poor plough got him a knuckle on a seamed forehead from a peasant who relied for his life on the loan of the beasts.

Rattling around with the Henry and others, Hal had even abused his rank, only sometimes realising that the food and drink he and his band took from a blank-faced family was more than they could afford.

Even later, into the full of himself, there had been times when he considered that his fruitful raiding into the English Borders had been the saving of Herdmanston in lean times. Later still, of course, he had come to realise that it was his father’s constant, sure and steady stewardship which provided.

Now it was his hand. The Lord of Herdmanston – in time, he thought, I might have become the Auld Sire of Herdmanston save that a covetous king and a beautiful wummin got in the road of it and placed it all at hazard.

He shook the mordbid thoughts just as a rider came up, with men at his back; he did not need Sim’s warning growl to know who it was – the red lion shield told him and sent a block of ice into his belly.

MacDuff of Fife, Isabel’s kin, his florid face and wisped hair like autumn bracken in snow, a distant ghost of herself.

‘Herdmanston,’ MacDuff called out and Hal stopped. Behind the man was his mesnie of men-at-arms, a dozen men in maille and surcoats and lances, lacking only the slap of a sword on shoulder and a decent horse to rank them beside any knight on the field.

‘Ye impugn my honour, sirra, and I am Fife. Ye have been gallivanting with the Countess of Buchan, I hear. Bad enough that her name should be tied with The Bruce, but he at least is an earl. You are of no account at all.’

That was flat out as an unsheathed blade and Sim’s eyes narrowed.

‘Have a care…’ he began and Hal laid a hand on his arm to silence him. He was fighting for words and against angry ones when a shadow fell on them both, making them turn into the blazing blue of Wallace’s eyes.

‘Ye are not Fife,’ Wallace said and, though it was low and soft, everyone heard it grating across the pride of MacDuff like an edge on maille. ‘The Lord of Fife is a wee laddie, held by the English these last dozen years. Fife is now the provenance of the Crown until he is returned to it – and in the absence of a king, it is held by the Guardian. Who is me.’

He leaned forward a little and MacDuff, before he could resist, leaned back.

‘So who is Fife, my wee lord?’

There was silence and Wallace smeared a savage smile on his face and slapped his jupon. ‘It is me.’

He waved a hand behind him, never taking his eyes from MacDuff’s pallid face.

‘Down there, beyond the pows and a burn or two, is the enemy. Turn your ire on them, my lord, not yer own.’

He nodded to Hal.

‘On yer way, as commanded.’

Hal kicked Griff and moved under the scowl of MacDuff, his men trailing after him like a snow wind. It took MacDuff a yard or so before he recovered his voice and enough anger to substitute for courage, though he glared at Hal’s back first, before he dared turn it on Wallace.

‘This is what we have become then,’ he snarled, reining round. ‘Petty lords and brigands rule in these days. It will not stand, sirra. It will not stand.’

Neither will you, Wallace thought bitterly.

Hal and the hobilars rode away from it, feeling the imagined heat on their backs, past the right flank, upwards of a thousand men in a ring that was being called schiltron. It was a word from the old time and the north that meant Shield Troop, though half of the men in it would not know that and the other half would not care much: they were busy hammering stakes all round themselves, out to four or five feet distant, linking them with a tangle of ropes.

There were four such rings in a line, with at least a thousand, not more than two, in each one. In between, the tall, muscled Selkirk men waited quietly, bows still unstrung, checking arrow flights and trying to ignore the galloping of their commander, Sir John Steward, riding up and down with instructions, exhortations, a manic energy that would not let him or his slathered horse rest.

‘They will run,’ Bangtail muttered and Hal realised he was talking of the knights, glanced back to the shift and stamp of Scotland’s finest.

No Bruces, or Balliols, or a single Comyn lord; for all they had sent men they stayed away because they would not be second to each other and certainly not to the upstart Wallace. Knighted or not, they sneered – though never to his face – he is still a brigand of little account.

At least, that would be the excuse of it, Hal thought, but the lie in it was more to do with their terror of Longshanks and what they could do to placate the beast.

They will run, Hal said to himself and the dull cold of it sifted into his belly, chill as wet rock.

The cloy of the communion wine, too sweet for Edward’s taste, made his mouth feel thick. His ribs hurt where the fool of a groom had let his own warhorse step on him the previous night – it gave the king no comfort to know that the groom was nursing his own ribs and most of his striped back.

If truth was told, Edward thought moodily to himself, his ribs only ached worse than the rest of him – sleeping like a spearman on the wet ground, wrapped in a cloak, may perform wonders for his image but it did nothing for his joints.